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Accidents welcome

I wanted to write a tip about paragraphs. Paragraphs are very good for stories.

I talked to Scoble the illustrator elf about the sort of illustration that would be perfect for a tip about paragraphs. We each suggested ideas and then imagined a young girl who talked so fast and continuously—never even stopping to breathe—that her words would feel like an avalanche with no end.

Scoble sketched out something quick. “Sort of like this…” he suggested. Yes, exactly. Her words began to crowd the picture.

“Yes! That will work well!” I agreed. And he went off to create the final drawing in his sunny arboreal studio in the workshop.

When I began writing the tip about paragraphs, I couldn’t seem to make the words and the drawing fit together. I loved the illustration, but I couldn’t seem to say how it illustrated the usefulness of paragraphs.

The tip was not going as planned.

What had occurred? An unexpected storyaccident. Nothing bad, just unexpected. Storytelling often produces accidents.

New idea: First of all, paragraphs are important. Without them, words start to fill space and feel overwhelming.

Second of all, things which at first seem “wrong,” can actually become some of the nicest parts of a story. We created something that didn’t quite work as we had imagined, but it is still fun to look at, and still useful—because we turned a tip about Paragraphs into a tip about Story Accidents, and how they are often useful.